This blog looks back at classic sports telecasts and announcers (primarily from the mid-1960s to present), provides DVR alerts for upcoming classic programming, and covers other historical aspects of sports media.

Saturday, December 31, 2011

I grew up at a time when sports telecasts in color were still a big deal, when many areas of the USA would get only a single baseball telecast per week, when the college basketball regular season was a non-entity on national TV, when Curt Gowdy was the dominant network TV voice and Howard Cosell was the most controversial figure in the industry. Since then, the sports media business has undergone enormous changes.

While I've seen a lot of televised sports since the late 1960s, my interest goes far beyond simply watching the games. I've always paid attention to who is in the broadcast booth and how they call the action. I've also been quite intrigued by the scheduling decisions made by TV networks (starting times for games, number of telecasts per season, and announcer assignments) and how these factors have evolved over time.

I always enjoyed reading sports TV columnists such as Jack Craig and Rudy Martzke as well as books by broadcasters and others in the TV sports business. I recorded some original telecasts with a VCR and have saved others on DVD from networks such as ESPN Classic. In recent years, I've researched various aspects of history of sports on TV and learned many things I never knew or had forgotten.